Font editor problem

Soda

Hi,Every time i open the Font Editor with any font in the template and scroll down the font row a few steps, i'll get weird error messages, like access violation at some memory address amongst other, and my comp freeze. I have tried all the other built in editors, and they seem to work for me.Is this a bug maybe, or am i doing something wrong?

I'm using scistudio on win98SE.

(sorry for my bad english)

Jim C

Hi Soda,

I'm guessing the problem is the operating system. I'm using Win98SE as well, and while I haven't tried the font editor, I do have frequent problems with error messages and crashes. My problems mostly occur in the view editor and the pic editor, if I've been using them for too long. I solve this to some extent by doing a lot of my view editing in photoshop, and pasting it into the view editor. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to paste into the pic editor, since you have to make a vector drawing.

Windows 98 is very buggy and I have heard of many problems like this with other programs. I would imagine that SCIStudio works better under newer operating systems.

Soda

Thanks for your reply Jim.

I really got so frustrated that i uninstalled scistudio to day, but now when i see that you, another 98SE user, manage to live with those problems, then maybe i can too. I will likely give scistudio another go later this evening. After all, it seem to be a very good program and is probably my only chance to actual write an sci game.

Does anyone know if Brian (the developer) is trying to fix these 98-editor issues?

Also, is it possible to open and edit the fonts in another program, like photoshop or similar?

doan sephim

i use scistudio with windows xp and it works without error. however, that is not my computer, so i try to do work on my games on my computer which is currently running windows 98 also. i get errors in the pic and view editors...so i suspect it really is windows that is the problem.is there a quick fix?doan

Jim C

There's no fix as far as I know, other than upgrading to Windows XP or something. :P

Soda, my advice to you is that if you really want to edit the fonts, do it on another computer with a more recent operating system. Then import the edited font files into your game on your win98 computer. Otherwise, just don't edit the fonts (I've never tried it, so maybe it just doesn't work in win98). But don't give up on SCI Studio. It really is a great program, despite the instability in win98. I've been working on my own game for a few weeks now, and I've gotten pretty far along. It's so much fun that it's worth putting up with the occasional crashes and error messages.

My advice to everyone using Windows 98 is this: save, save, save! Especially when you are working on views and pics, save the files every time you make a major change. Sometimes you can still save after the error messages start coming. Also, as I said before, it helps to do a lot of your view editing in Paint or Photoshop or something. Just take notice that if you use a color that's not in the SCI Studio palette, it will revert to the closest possible match when you paste your image into the view editor.

The pic editor seems to be more stable than the view editor, but you should still save often when you work in it. Script editing is perfectly stable, and that's the most important part.

Soda

SCI Studio is now installed on my computer again, and truly, it's a fantastic program, i can't even imagine how Brian could manage to produce something as wonderful that let us SCI-lovers build our own games on the sierra engine. However, the disadvantage is that sometimes it make my Win98 feel older then Space Quest 1. But has you said Jim, if we save often, then it's not that big problem, something we already learned way back in the Space Quest days :)Thanks.

Why i wanted to edit my fonts, was to see if i could add those three swedish letters that are missing in the english alphabet, so i could write a game completly in swedish, but that is maybe not possible anyway... so it's no big deal, i just "try" to write it in english instead.

Jim, are you planning to release your game for everyone to download when you are finished with it?I hope so, it's probably great :)

Jim C

Thanks, I think I will release it for download. I'm trying to get it done by Christmas, because it's going to be a Christmas present for my friends who are characters in it. There are some inside jokes in it, but it should still be a fun game for anyone to play. It's also a good example of the kind of game someone with almost no prior programming experience can make (relatively quickly) using Brian's program.

As strange as it sounds, my favorite part is all the death scenes I'm putting in. Just like in Space Quest, they're often the funniest part!

Good luck, Soda. You should register as a member on this forum, because the people on here are very helpful if you can't figure something out (as long as you've checked the tutorial and help file first).

Robin_Gravel

all the death scenes I'm putting in. Just like in Space Quest, they're often the funniest part!

Death scenes eh! Your game is going to be great. Even most advanced fan sci game at the moment.

Robin Gravel

BP out of area

SCI Studio makes MASSIVE use of the VCL GUI library, which has been discovered to leak major memory. WinNT/XP automatically frees the memory from processes, which 95/98[me=]use shared memory. This means that when the memory it's disposed of properly, it never will be until reboot. I'm not using Borland C++Builder anymore for future projects, so I won't have to worry about how terrible Borland's code library is, but unless I rewrite SCI Studio again, it'll always be BCB code, so it just work work perfectly under 9x/ME.[/me]

Soda

Jim, you are so right, all death scenes in SQ was almost the funniest part. My first Sierra game was actually SQ3, i bought it for my Amiga 500 in 1989, and i still remember how funny i thought some of the death scenes were. Especially my first on, when Wilco got shoot by a crazy robot and some ironic text about ventilation came up (don't sound so funny now). But i actually played it all over again from the beginning, just to show some of my friends when poor Wilco was tortured by that robot. lol.

Brian, it's understandable that you cannot rewrite SCI Studio just to make it fully work on old OS. Beside that, i have still not have any problems with the other editors on my Win98, don't know why, it's just the font editor that will not work for me, but that's no big problem. I admire your work with SCI Studio, everything you have done with it is pure quality.

BP ooa

I think one of the problems is how I constantly have it drawing the rectangle around the selected character in a different colour, and what the VCL is doing is creating a brush with the current colour in WinAPI and not disposing of it, so after doing it a bunch of times, it will run out of handles. I think I will (I know I will actually) be rewriting a bunch of the GUI code to write directly to the WinAPI bypassing the VCL. This will not only speed things up by about 10000% (seriously, no joke!), but it will also eliminate these horrible issues. Maybe in time the whole thing will be rewritten to WinAPI bit by bit :)

McMagic

I've also tried to run SCI Studio 3 on Win98, and the font editor is practically worthless, as it keeps crashing.Funnily, the font editor of Sci Graphic Studio v1.5 is a lot more stable than in any later versions.

I don't understand enough of the memory question, but I guess it won't help to use tools like FreeMem that try to free memory as soon as it gets too low?